I've been wanting to post for a long time now but have always been nervous. Four years ago I was very overweight (top weight at 230) and extremely unhealthy. I decided to make a change and completely overhauled my lifestyle. I went completely drug/alcohol free, vegan and started exercising regularly. I'm now 162 and my body fat is at 16%. I'm happy with my results but I've hit a serious plateau which has been frustrating me. The past month I've started working out a lot more and today is day one of a raw vegan diet so I'm hoping that in a month I'll finally start seeing some progress in getting the last of the fat off. I also wanted to finally post some before pictures in order to help keep myself accountable. I'll post follow up pics in a month. Thanks!

Welcome to the forum, and congratulations on both your lifestyle changes and your weight loss ~ that's a huge drop! I bet you feel great for losing that amount, how are you finding things in relation to keeping the weight off? Is that easier since you transitioned to being vegan?

Good luck with your raw foods diet, maybe you could start a daily log/diary about it so we can follow along and see how it going for you? I for one am interested to see the difference in you after a month!

Look forward to seeing you post more around the forum, if you have any question please feel free to ask no matter how small they may seem. It's a great community on here MF.

Hey MF! So my initial weight loss was pretty concurrent with me going vegan. That's what has frustrated me about my plateau since I eat a fairly healthy plant based diet and have been since I first started years ago. By that I mean I'm not that much of a junk food vegan. It's easy for me to keep the weight I've already lost off but it's a struggle to lose anymore. That's why I want to up the ante and go raw to see if that helps anything. I also do a full body morning workout on monday wednesday and friday followed by a Vega protein shake. I don't have a car and ride a bike everywhere so I'm hoping the cardio from my bike riding mixed with the morning strength training will start giving me some results. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Before I made an attempt to become vegan I ate 5-6 small meals every day and stuck with lower GI type carbs and achieved a bodyfat in the neighborhood of 7%. This method can be done in a vegan fashion too I do believe. The easiest way for a body to gain fat is to flood your system with carbs in each meal. I've tried to think of a good analogy to explain this, but I'll just try to keep it simple

Both brain function and muscle fuel (glycogen) comes from carbohydrates primarily. Eating in smaller meals and not over-doing the carbohydrate flow does two things. It keeps your body and mind happy by giving it some (but not too much) and it gives your body just enough carbs to fuel workouts and just your daily energy. When we eat larger meals we tend to put too many carbohydrates in our bodies at once. What happens after our glycogen stores are replenished if we have too many carbs? It goes to fat storage. Our bodies are designed for survival so it stores it in case of a shortage. When it never sees a shortage, we just keep adding to it.

So, knowing the basics....smaller meals about 2.5 - 3 hrs apart with lower GI foods or really watching the quantity of carbohydrates we take in each meal.

One more thing. Lower GI carbohydrate foods like Old Fashioned/Steel Cut Oats, Sweet Potatoes, Ezekiel Bread, etc are great sources when trying to lose weight. They get into your system slower so it doesn't flood your body with too many carboydrates at once, but satisfies our energy needs...and keep our brain happy.

It gets deeper, but this is my experience and it seems to work. Hope it helps! And btw, great job so far!!!

Thanks for the advice, RickB! I've started looking into how different GI foods affect the body and it's pretty interesting. I've found that most of what I'm eating is already lower GI index foods and the eating 2.5-3 hours apart is coming naturally because I'm not eating big heavy meals that sit in my stomach all day. After I eat I feel refreshed and ready to go rather then sluggish but the downside is when I get hungry I again I have to eat immediately or I get really lightheaded. Something that can be a hassle while at work. I'm going to be starting a journal of what I eat like MF suggested so hopefully that can help me to track and adjust and also if anyone else sees anything that's glaringly wrong they can help.

xMDavidx wrote:Thanks for the advice, RickB! I've started looking into how different GI foods affect the body and it's pretty interesting. I've found that most of what I'm eating is already lower GI index foods and the eating 2.5-3 hours apart is coming naturally because I'm not eating big heavy meals that sit in my stomach all day. After I eat I feel refreshed and ready to go rather then sluggish but the downside is when I get hungry I again I have to eat immediately or I get really lightheaded. Something that can be a hassle while at work. I'm going to be starting a journal of what I eat like MF suggested so hopefully that can help me to track and adjust and also if anyone else sees anything that's glaringly wrong they can help.

-MD!

Gotcha! I have similar problems as I have reactive hypoglycemia....but that said, if I stick to lower GI stuff OR add fats that slow down absorption (lowers glycemic load)...then I do fine. Fats also help you feel full longer. Try getting in some of that and see if it helps. And one thing I did really explain about lower GI foods is that they are kind of like a time-release capsule allowing the carbohydrates to get into our system for slower and longer times.

One thing you could play around with is having a high GI food after your workout along with some protein source. I really don't know if this works, but a lot of bodybuilders believe that this spikes our insulin at the right time and is supposed to give positive results. I'm sure opinions vary. Fun to try anyways to see how you respond.

So it's been a month since I posted my first photos and while I don't see too much of a difference I feel great. I found out that my real current body fat percentage is 17.2 so I'm happy to have an actual starting number. I did pretty well on my raw diet (which did eventually transition to more of a high raw deal) and I feel like the past month I've eaten healthier then I ever have in my life. I feel great but I've been going through periods of lethargy. I'm going to blame this on having eliminated a lot of stimulants (such as caffeine and I'm trying to avoid refined sugar) out of my diet.